Lactuca virosa – wild opioid lettuce – 50 seeds

Wild lettuce has been used medicinally for thousands of years. Two thousand years ago Pliny the Elder (AD24 – AD79) wrote that extract of wild lettuce was a panacea curing almost any ailment. Perhaps the patients just forgot they were ill...

CAVEAT: do your own research before trying preparations of wild lettuce. There is a lot of information out there and the plant, latex and extracts are used in a number of different ways.

SEED COUNT – I count seeds very carefully. I point this out because 50 seeds of this plant don't look very large and you may think there aren't 50 until you count them. If you are concerned about numbers, please count the seeds. There will be 50+.

Lactuca virosa is a biennial usually growing for two years before flowering. At the flowering stage the sap is at its most potent and is often referred to as latex – a sticky, milky sap that tastes bitter. Despite being bitter and leaving a horrid taste in your mouth, I find the sap moreish...

The leaves can be used for tea either fresh or dried. The latex from flower spikes can be collected for tinctures, smoking or eating fresh (in moderation). The whole (chopped) flower spikes can be boiled (well, simmered down without boiling or it can destroy the active ingredient) down until a black resin is formed which this can be smoked and perhaps it can be used in other ways – I haven't looked into this too deeply.

Tinctures seem the easiest way of extracting the active ingredients for non-smoking purposes.

The leaves are edible raw or cooked but the bitterness would mean most people wouldn't include them in salads. Leaves are a little spiky but they are flexible and don't hurt to touch. Touching the plant can result in it exuding latex and making your hands sticky.

It can flower in less than two years. My experience – I started mine in pots – was that it grew very little for around 10 months when I planted some very small (around 3-4cm across) plants out like one of the images which is about 10 months old. The root system wasn't very well developed at the planting-out stage and they were most certainly not root-bound. After a while they took off. So a heads up - that first 12 months might be slow growing.

There are a number of types of wild lettuce. Lactuca virosa flower spikes can apparently get up to 7 feet tall but are likely shorter when grown in pots. My spikes planted in-ground in vegetable beds are around 5 and a half feet tall and that's considered normal.

Lactuca virosa won't survive frost but can be grown in pots in colder climates and brought inside or into a hot house for winter.